How is it that we get a major insider trading scandal every two decades or so? The last big one, which ultimately ensnarled Michael Milken, the legendary junk bond king, happened in the late eighties. The current one, with a mass of arrests yesterday, threatens the hedge fund industry.
It seems reasonable to assume from the intermittent decades of prosecution that this particular sort of financial larceny is quite a rare bird and when it rears its head the Feds pounce.
And yet, as reasonably, we know the trading of information, the imperative to have such market-moving information, has only grown more fundamental to the financial business since the Milken scandal. So, either:
A.) Traders, in the last two decades, have become more scrupulous in their behavior or more clever in their deceits. Or,
B.) Prosecutors haven't been too interested in insider trading, which is actually quite a complicated crime to prove.
Continue reading on newser.com